PITTSFIELD, Mass.— The Community Development Board needs some more time with its proposed short-term rental ordinance.

Members want to ensure that Airbnb-type rentals don’t burden neighborhoods while allowing property owners, not corporations, to earn extra income.  On Tuesday, the board continued a vote on draft language to its March meeting.

"I think it’s worthwhile to take our time with this one," City Planner Kevin Rayner said.

Pittsfield receives a number of complaints about short-term rentals but without a zoning ordinance, enforcement is hard.  Rayner explained, "We don't have a short-term rental to find in the zoning ordinance so the zoning enforcement officer goes out in the daytime, inspects the property that the complaint is subject to, and doesn't see anything that suggests it's a short term rental and therefore he can't enforce on it."

With the Community Development Board as the petitioner, the city wants to define short-term rentals in the zoning, pave a path of recourse for people and enforcement, and create complaint procedures for misuse.

"While also defining what they are, giving requirements to have these in a safe way, safe and non-impactful way to the neighborhood," Rayner added.

This would be partnered with a city code amendment that covers topics not covered in the ordinance.

The ordinance’s purpose is to "Allow residents to earn supplemental income from short term rental properties while also minimizing the risks to health and safety, provide for the orderly operation of short-term rental properties in residential neighborhoods, and to deter commercial interests from purchasing housing units with the intention of primarily using these units for short-term housing."

According to the draft, a short-term rental is any rental of legal units or bedrooms within a dwelling for less than 30 consecutive days but not at a bed-and-breakfast, hotel, motel, lodging house, or timeshare.  It also bars the rental to have stays more than 150 days out of a calendar year and there must be 200 square feet of gross floor area per renter.

There will be at least a couple of clarifying edits before the final draft.

Several people who live on Onota Lake voiced concern about neighborhoods being taken over by rowdy short-term rentals.

"What's to prevent a corporation coming in here, buying up a whole tract of land, putting down condos, putting up 10 docks so that they could be 40 boats in that part of the lake, even if it is a short-term rental," a Thomas Island resident asked.

Rayner pointed out that an owner can only have one short-term rental.

"I think all of the municipalities are dealing with short-term rentals, whether on lakes or just in communities and so the amendment has built in some restrictions so that what you're thinking of doesn't happen, that you have all of these big condos on the lakefront. I don't think that could be done through a short-term rental," Chair Sheila Irvin said, adding that if it started to happen it could be dealt with through local regulations.

Two Lakeway Drive residents expressed concern about the occupancy requirements, sharing their experiences with a rental on their street.

"I know that it's limited to one short-term renter per 200 square feet. I understand that but in the house that is two houses up from our house on the lake, they are advertising it for 16 plus occupants and we experienced that last summer," Gary Moynihan said.

"What that does and the type of people that it brings to a residential, very quiet neighborhood—that is not what the short-term rentals are about."

He said the rentals are great for a residence that may have a couple of bedrooms to rent out while the owner is in the house but "This is a 16-plus property offered by the owners who do not live on the property at all."

He reported seeing underage people drinking and groups occupying the property for party weekends.

"Yelling across the lake, making it just very intrusive to the residents who live there and enjoy the property," Moynihan explained.

His wife Amy Boyington felt there is an attitude that the city has something to gain from short-term rentals: tourism.  She said that Pittsfield is a former industrial town and not based on hospitality.

"And that there was an attitude of people feeling like somehow Pittsfield missed out on this opportunity, and that we've got something to gain turning homes, which have a reasonable footprint in a residential area, into commercial properties, and that that's somehow going to benefit all the deficits that are going on in the city," she said.

Boyington said Pittsfield is not equipped to invite this type of commerce into the city.

"We have a neighborhood that is very neighborly. We deal with a bar, a bridge. We have a huge number of people who come in from one end of the street to the other to walk our neighborhood," she said.

"When we do have problems that just seem like the problems we need to address, we can't get police to come and deal with them because of the other demands of the city so as a neighborhood, we deal with these things very nicely so that we can enjoy what we have in our neighborhood."

Similarly, Barry Clairmont of Pheasant Way fears the proposed ordinance is not restrictive enough and will cause a free-for-all.

"Imagine if you had one of these next to your house —and don't think that that can't happen, because it can— and imagine if you're actually sandwiched between two of them," he said.

Board members would like to mull the document again before voting on it, which could include an occupancy cap.

Associate member Ben O'Shaughnessy felt they should be cautious about "getting too restrictive and maybe discounting a potential economic impact."  He would also like them to be cautious about barring LLCs for the sake of local mom-and-pop landlords and feels that the 150-day limit will keep investors out.

"I don't particularly feel like we need to do anything to help benefit the investor, although I don't it's not that I want to disenfranchise the investor, but that's not really why I think we're doing this," board member Elizabeth Herland said.

Rayner clarified that the ordinance just says that an entity can only have one short-term rental dwelling.

"We're not specifically trying to target LLCs but we're just trying to target housing developments," he said, later adding that this will probably lessen the number of short-term rentals because people will have to reinvest in them to meet building codes.




 

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